Criminal Lawyer Blog

Carding debate misleading

Toronto criminal lawyer Matthew Friedberg says he’s seeing fewer complaints about "carding" come from accused persons before the courts and as a result, he suspects police aren’t engaging in the controversial street checks as often as they once did.

“Anecdotally, as far as I know, police aren’t really carding much anymore perhaps because officers are constrained as to how to execute carding," he tells AdvocateDaily.com. "I think there is also a fair bit of confusion about it at the moment. As a result, the police are simply choosing not to do it and I don’t think it comes up much in court any longer.”

Friedberg says it’s ironic that the carding issue has received so much press in recent months because it is his opinion that police are no longer employing the tactic the way they had been before the issue became a topic of public debate.

Indeed, there has been a great deal of publicity surrounding the police street checks commonly called carding. Most recently, Ontario’s former ombudsman described the practice as “wrong and illegal.”